President says Indian nuke tests were weapons of peace

President K R Narayanan on Tuesday asserted that India's
nuclear tests were aimed at the liquidation of the nuclear
club and not to blast a way
into it.

"Our objective is to awaken the people of the world and work together
with all
nations for the liquidation of any such club along with the immense
stock of weapons of mass destruction stored in the cellars of this
exclusive club," the President said.

Inaugurating the birth centenary celebrations of Dr K S Krishnan
in Bangalore, he said the nuclear
demonstration would act as a catalytic agent in the international efforts to
eliminate such weapons from the
face of the earth.

Pointing out that the objective of scientific development in
the country was to use it for
peaceful purposes, he said: "No country
has believed in using science and technology for peaceful purposes
and strove to do so as India has done during the last 50 years of
Independence. No country has pleaded so passionately and
consistently for disarmament and the
elimination of nuclear weapons
as India has done."

Stressing that India had refrained from nuclear
weaponisation for 24 years, he said the country's pleadings for
disarmament went unheeded. "On the other hand the powers were
only refining and sophisticating the destructive
capacity of their vast nuclear weapon
arsenals," Narayanan added.